At Qwiigs, Both Food and the Sea View Turn Out to Be Top Drawer

There just may be some substance to author John Fowles’ (“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and “The Magus”) endlessly reiterated theme that you can’t really know anything for sure.

Take, for example, my long-held observation that the better a restaurant’s view of the water, the worse its cooking is likely to be. Just think about the last restaurant meal you had within sight of the tumbling waves.

However, a chink has been made in my hypothesis by a rather handsome Ocean Beach restaurant called Qwiigs. This place has as grand a view of the Pacific as could be desired, but it also boasts a kitchen staff that really knows how to cook. This unlikely but happy marriage is good news for anyone who enjoys digging into a fine plate of fish while contemplating the element in which his dinner passed its days.

The restaurant’s name makes one think of Captain Queeg, the pathetic anti-hero of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny,” but there is no connection; the eatery is named after a sports club to which the proprietor belonged in his younger days.

But the name is the only odd thing about the place. The decor is handsome, woodsy in the California style, and softly lit by candles in the evening so as not to interfere with the view of the park and shoreline outside the windows. The high, rounded ceiling does capture and amplify conversations and laughter, however, and anyone who insists on peace and quiet as part of a restaurant experience probably will be unhappy here. The mood is casual in San Diego’s notable beach tradition.

At first inspection, the standing menu looks so like the classic beach restaurant list that one expects the server to walk up with a basket of that leaden, half-light half-dark bread, and directions to the salad bar. But then one notices the separate, supplementary list of daily fish specials, which always includes at least half a dozen choices, most of them moistened with a sauce of some ambition. Recent specials have included monkfish with walnut-thyme butter, corvina in a red bell pepper butter, ahi in wasabi (Japanese horseradish paste) butter, and Louisiana redfish not cooked in the increasingly irritating “blackened” style. The specials list also mentions the various wines available by the glass, and it is an impressive selection; the regular wine list also rises well above the norm.

Qwiigs does serve the typical beach meal; it simply does it better. Meals start with the choice of New England clam chowder or green salad, and both are first rate. The chowder to an extent celebrates the American potato at the expense of the American clam, but it does so stylishly with an excellently textured and flavored broth. A cruet of sherry, in which hot birds’ eye peppers have steeped for a few months, arrives on the side; a few dashes of this liquid intensify the soup in the same way that a peppery rouille does a Marseillaise bouillabaisse. The oversized salad incorporates the virtues of a salad bar in terms of selection, without the inconvenience, and consists of wonderful greens surrounded by various vegetable garnishes. The house vinaigrette topped with crumbles of blue cheese is the best choice of dressing.

Qwiigs’ fish may seem so good simply because the kitchen starts most of them in the oven and finishes them under the broiler, rather than consigning them to the mesquite grill that stars in most seafood kitchens (mesquite, while likable, does have its limitations). Qwiigs’ method produces an exceptionally moist, well-flavored fish, and seems to do so without exception; three different kinds were tried, and each had the same perfect finish.

A serving of Lake Superior whitefish not only was whitefish, but was indeed superior. The kitchen resorted to the old--and disreputable, when used to disguise long-frozen fish--trick of powdering the fish with paprika, a ploy that really did bring out the flavor in this case.

Atlantic cod in garlic-basil butter was equally nice, given that the combination of basil with fish is a pairing that takes a little adjustment of one’s taste sensibilities.

A fat filet of silver salmon was remarkably fine, melting at the touch of a fork and as fully flavored as could be wished. The only problem with the mustard-flavored cream sauce was that the kitchen was parsimonious when dishing it up; no more than a tablespoonful of sauce had been apportioned to this serving of salmon.

The quality of cooking extends to the standing menu, which runs from shellfish offerings to steaks, prime rib in various cuts, a couple of obligatory chicken dishes (the ubiquitous teriyaki, and a stir-fry) and several pastas. Some beef and seafood items are available in the popular pas de deux style, as in steak with king crab, prime rib with teriyaki chicken, and so forth. As a major quibble with this menu, it should be pointed out that it offers Australian lobster tail, a failing that is inexplicable in light of the lovely local lobsters currently in season. It is one thing to import the America’s Cup from Australia; we don’t need their lobsters when ours are in season.

The only item tried from this menu was the top sirloin steak, which turned out to be a large, well-mannered piece of meat cooked the way it was ordered. The baked potato that accompanied it was equally well-mannered, and the combination was right in the classic mood--not a paragon among meals, perhaps, but a good one.

The menu treats dessert as an afterthought, which is unfortunate, since meals are not so large as to preclude the thought of a concluding sweet. The choices here are very much in the inferior beach restaurant style, a surprise given Qwiigs’ overall excellence, and tend to concentrate on heavy ice cream pies. One of these, flavored with macadamia nuts and drizzled with chocolate sauce, was acceptable, and more than sufficient for two guests, but it was not terribly interesting.

There is a certain sort of professional server that gravitates to beach restaurants, a no-nonsense type who likes the casual life and would not be happy in a formal eatery, but who definitely takes pride in his work. This is the sort employed here, and the service is overall quite pleasant and efficient.

QWIIGS

5083 Santa Monica Blvd., San Diego

222-1101

Dinner served 5-10 p.m. nightly.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $30 to $50.